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EU administrative law scholarship and practice remain confused about the reach and interrelation of arts 290 and 291 TFEU, which created the categories of delegated and implementing Commission acts. The introduction of these two different instruments of executive rule-making by the Lisbon Treaty has prompted attempts in delineating them, based on constitutional theories of separation of powers or functional differentiation. These attempts have failed to a large extent, all the more since the CJEU’s relevant case law has not been helpful in constructing a proper distinction. Today, recourse to arts 290 and 291 TFEU by the legislator takes place in the tension created between the fact that the Treaties, informed by an abstract constitutional distinction between legislation and execution, appear to have created categorically different acts, and the fact that delegated and implementing rule-making procedures in practice have become increasingly similar to each other. In simplified terms, the problem is that delegated and implementing acts appear – in terms of their foundation in primary law – as fundamentally different acts that are, however, adopted in practice through similar procedures, at the same time as their content and legal effects are indistinguishable in many or even in most cases. Yet, if we accept that the creation of two forms of Commission acts was prompted by some form of legal necessity or legitimate political will, then understanding the difference between delegating and implementing acts remains paramount.

Arts. 290 and 291 TFEU are notoriously hard to differentiate. However, there is some evidence that a separation on the basis of substantive regulation through delegated acts and procedural specifications by implementing acts is forthcoming. The substantive – procedural differentiation is not very clear cut, but it affords the institutions flexibility in answering new challenges while at the same time exerting some guiding force. This Conclusion describes the separation of delegated and implementing acts along the substantive – procedural differentiation but also points to problems ahead. Thus, constitutional ambiguity, an inappropriate reliance on pre-Lisbon doctrine and the lack of a common vision continue to plague the law on EU administrative rule-making. To find a way to fulfil the promise of simplification that is part of the Lisbon reform, the EU institutions will all need to take the procedural safeguards around delegated and implementing acts more seriously.